Sioux Falls native turned hit hairdresser in Texas to be featured on Netflix ‘Queer Eye’ series

Before Allure magazine named him the best hairstylist in Austin, Texas …

Before styling at New York Fashion Week and amassing some impressive celebrity clientele …

And before he became a business owner now featured on “Queer Eye” Season Six on Netflix …

Tyler Cochran was a Sioux Falls kid, a Lincoln High School graduate who took an unconventional path after graduation that has paid off in a big way.

“It kind of found me in high school,” said Cochran, who had been thinking about cooking school and knew a traditional college route wasn’t for him.

“It was a recommendation of my mom. She saw I was messing with hair, and I cut my own hair, and toward the end of high school I was giving myself haircuts and I was cutting friends’ hair, and she said, ‘You should look into becoming a hairdresser.’”

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He headed to the Twin Cities and started a part-time front desk job at a hair salon in 2005.

But, unbeknownst to Cochran at the time, it wasn’t just any hair salon. It was Denny Kemp’s hair salon. And Kemp, the creative director for Aveda, became Cochran’s mentor.

“I had no idea I was going to be interviewing with someone with such accolades,” he said. “Denny is probably the No.1 mentor I’ve had in my career.”

He enrolled at the Aveda Institute and worked at Kemp’s salon for nearly a decade before his love for music called him to Austin.

“I’ve always played music, and I really caught the bug for Austin in 2009 when my band played a string of shows,” he said. “And in 2014, I had got the Austin bug, I guess you could say. Honestly, weather was not my favorite thing about Minneapolis, and so that was another draw. Music and the standard of living in Austin was so great especially for young professionals, so that’s what really brought me back down here.”

He began working at a salon called Jose Luis, which launched the careers of many Austin stylists and “was just another place that was so amazing for growth and opportunity,” Cochran said. “Most of my peers have either gone on to do really successful salon suites or have opened up their own salons.”

That includes Cochran and his fiancee, Toni Jennings, whose work also earned impressive accolades. She has been featured in the hairstyling trade publications Behind the Chair and Hairbrained.

The two also have earned styling positions at events like New York Fashion Week in New York City, the forefront of America’s fashion industry. Cochran was named Best Hairdresser in Austin by Allure magazine in 2017.

But owning a salon “wasn’t something I was super interested in until I met Toni,” said Cochran, who has a wedding planned this spring. “She’s great at hair too, and I don’t want to call it a brand, but she and I together have this brand, and it just made sense to go all-in with her on this.”

They signed a lease for Hair House Atx three weeks before the pandemic started, thinking it was “a two-week flu,” and “then everything just shut down,” he said. “So the salon was put on hold for any sort of construction for six months almost. It was a nightmare.”

But it’s now seemingly working out more like a dream. Hair House has grown to nine stylists and created an atmosphere unlike any salon in Austin, Cochran said.

“It’s loud. The music’s up. We have incense burning,” he said. “It feels like an after-party more than going to a salon.”

It’s a vibe that caught the attention of a crew from “Queer Eye,” which recently released its sixth season on Netflix and is headquartered a few blocks from the salon.

“They sent us an email – and we get these emails with Austin being a hotbed for entertainment – ‘Hey, we’d like to shoot at your place,’ and so when Netflix hit us up, it was like, ‘We’d like to shoot there,’ but we didn’t realize they were coming that day. They just showed up.”

While a first attempt at a segment didn’t work out, the second one “went on without a hitch,” Cochran said. “The whole crew showed up, they shot an episode inside our salon, which was great, and what was really cool was they called back a week later and asked if Toni and I would be on another episode with them.”

In that one, they cut hair in a shoot on location.

“It was really cool and just a glimpse of what is to come with this city,” Cochran said. “There was always a boom in Austin, but we’ve never seen the kind of rapid growth since COVID that we’re seeing right now. This is the third Netflix contract I’ve gotten since COVID.”

The series is far from Cochran’s first brush with celebrity, though. He has styled everyone from tequila giants to tech founders – including let’s just say Austin’s best-known tech entrepreneur who’s into electric vehicles and space flights.

Musicians from Brian Setzer to Nikki Lane, movie star Freida Pinto, supermodel Abigail O’Neill and Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield all have found themselves in Cochran’s chair.

He was planning to style a client in New York for an appearance on “Saturday Night Live” before COVID-related restrictions prevented it.

“It’s so crazy what’s happening now,” he said.

Cochran hasn’t lost touch with Sioux Falls, though. He returns to visit family, and “Sioux Falls always really impresses me every time I come back,” he said. “I’m like, ‘man, Toni, should we move here?’ It’s very inspiring, and it’s got a lot of grit, that local business grit. There’s so many entrepreneurs in Sioux Falls, and I don’t think a lot of cities are like that.”

The musician in him appreciates the way the city has evolved too.

“Cities the size of Sioux Falls don’t usually have as good of a music scene or local restaurant scene,” he said. “I see a lot of cities in Texas about the same size, and they’re just these corporate little cities. I think Sioux Falls is one of the most hidden gems in America. Honestly.”

For now, though, he said he’d consider hosting education and styling sessions in Sioux Falls, like those he has hosted at his salon for outside stylists.

That, too, is headed for an exciting next chapter.

The business will be moving into a 100-year-old home in downtown Austin in February that’s being converted into a salon.

Hair House will actually be in a house.

And Cochran credits his own hometown roots for helping him get there.

“When I tell people I’m from South Dakota, I may as well have been from Mars,” he said. “And when they get to know I’m a Midwestern boy, it’s honestly been really helpful. When someone from South Dakota is being nice, it’s genuine. It’s not passive nice. For Austinites … there’s a huge stigma with people moving here from Los Angeles. The humble pie has not been served up to certain newcomers.”

Oh, and though he’s too humble to offer it up without being asked, know this: If you’re in Austin thinking about being styled by Cochran, prepare for a wait.

A new client recently was looking for a full highlight and haircut, and “my first available was May 19,” he said. “I can make it work, but in all actuality if you’re a new client, it would be that long. It’s ridiculous.”